


The End Of The Beginning,

by naupathiac



Category: [[none]], or any you wish
Genre: Be weary, Multi, Other, and may they descend gracefully those dreamers, be careful, may they indeed, of people who say charming things, their words may be smooth but they themselves are anything but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-17 00:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1367245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naupathiac/pseuds/naupathiac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or perhaps it's the other way around?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End Of The Beginning,

You always told me I was a lackadaisical, hopeful kid with an overactive imagination.  
How, when we were younger, you would draw stick men in the ground with UVC pipes and chubby dirt-stained fingers while I was sprinkling food colouring on the sidewalk and pretending they were faerie traces. You would dress in your father's clothes, and take his pipe and stick it in your mouth, puffing out rosemary smoke. You would watch me as I clothed myself in nothing but translucent shimmering scarves, as I pricked my fingers countless times creating flower crowns from roses and daisies and camellias, and weaved them through my hair and makeshift mystic's garb. You said you loved how everyday I could come up with tens of thousands of scenarios to act out in the playground. We were the bee's knees, the cat's meow, the horse's appreciative neigh, and people envied us for how we always looked at bliss with everything we did.  
Then we got older.  
Size 16 loafers were no longer used as undercover telephones, and the hideaway between the couch and the bookcase grew dusty as we retired from our agent base. The flora wilted from the decorations we made for eachother, and were replaced with cotton sunflowers and cocked baseball caps that would outlast our cupcake memories of being a kid. We were still children, a mere 11 years old, but our light had already dulled.  
Or at least, mine did.  
I had grown into the artificiality of everything, from the accessories I would adorn myself with to the grin on my made-up face. Stress was already making itself known through steadily increasing amounts of work, and people were breaking up and making up faster than I could pull a weed from the overgrown grass. It seemed like everything was made to be broken, and I was so tired of the monotony of everyday life. I wanted to be the person in my daydreams, but the real world slapped me silly and yelled that I was aloof, stupid, and would amount to nothing but extra space in an alleyway dumpster. So I had severed my connection to my lurid thoughts. I would not let myself get caught up in fictitious nonsense anymore. This is the real world, so I had to live it realistically, and be a success or die covered in maggots.  
With that, I left my previous life in the dust.  
You did not.  
Shortly after my new way of living, your eyes shone with naught but concern. You would pester me constantly; your caps and jerseys were thrown out and replaced with sloppily made circlets and rich flowing tunics over plain light tees. You looked...ethereal, and thus you were forbidden. I couldn't, _wouldn't_ let myself be drawn into that world of fake dreams and promises of a getaway when it was impossible TO get away from our up-and-coming responsibilities.  
I humiliated you.  
I handpicked flowers riddled with thistles and hurt and handed them to you, and you accepted them like I had delivered the Mona Lisa straight to your door. Your fingertips and palms were more scar than soft tissue, and I added onto the marks embedded in your touch. Why didn't you get it...??!  
Years went by. You let your hair grow from a standard boy cut to something shaggier. You were able to put it in a tiny ponytail. Your skin went from smooth to oily to smooth again, and your arms stronger as your grip on me held tighter. You were bothersome, horrible, caught up in your delusional fantasies. You had invited me to your house to watch Peter Pan together and I laughed a bit too loudly as I shook my head and walked away. Welcome to the real world, population everyone but you. I had tried my hardest to be the meanest I could be. I crushed your crowns under my heel, smeared black marker on your shirts, poured mayonnaise on the crotch of your pants and caused a spectacle they still whisper about if you listen hard enough and you.  
Did not stop with your murmurings of a place where houses were built behind waterfalls and tiny people with lilac skin and eyes of obsidian grew fins and swam around the secluded abodes. You would embrace me from behind, your eyes sparkling with the pledges of taking us away to lands brewing with adventure. Your legs twitched with the need to examine the universes you dreamed of with such fervency, and I felt disgust  
and want.  
I hated you so much, but loved every whimsical part of you. I wished I could be as laidback as you were, with your empty head in the clouds catching fluff and ideas I had once treasured, and it sickened me. I yearned for the same badly. You were contagious, or maybe it was I who _really_ was wishing to be set free.  
I had to stop it.  
Feverish eyes looking up to meet wonder-filled, dilated irises matching in expression; I whispered that I was finally leaving your idiotic playtime world and entering the place where humans were supposed to lollygag in:  
reality.  
I turned and left you in the dust too.

At 19 1/2 was when I saw you again. Your slim ponytail reached your shoulderblades, and rectangular glasses sat upon your nose. Your eyes looked lighter than they were at 17; a smile threatening to split your mouth like a certain comical antagonist's bloomed as your arms wrapped around me in a warm welcome. Like clockwork, you began to weave a story of lore, and unprepared I was woefully and unwillingly ensnared. You spoke of candy castles in the sky held together only by snowcone syrup and frozen marshmallows, of the fanged creatures with wings like rice paper that flitted to and fro, bringing sugar-rock hail and lemon-drop sunshine down to Earth. You handed me a woven gardenia crown. The velvet petals were almost in my grasp when your next words drew the latch and shut the mind's gate closed  
and locked.  
You told me that you could fly.  
Without caring who looked or scowled at the disturbance, I raised my voice and shrieked. Were you out of your mind?!!! I was sick of you yet again, sick of your deception, sick of the utter SHIT that dribbled from your mouth like piss and reeked of vile lust and saccharine diarrhea. I was raving like a lunatic, I felt like one, I _was_ a stark-mad nutcase who was fed up with empty oaths to be saved from society and having to be the best or hanging from your balcony by a rope around your neck because why bother when you would fail in the long run why why why why why wh--  
Your hand rested itself upon my shoulder, and my incessant babbling calmed itself into a agitated ripple before subsiding completely. Your voice in my ear, your breath tickling the shell and piercing my eardrums was melodic, and I swayed in your direction.  
The next thing I knew I was on a couch, the smell of heady incense around me. You were in a chair the colour of the night sky, pipe in your mouth and ponytail over your left shoulder, puffing out rosemary and musk. From the angle I lay I could see you were shirtless, and intricate polychromed designs seemed to be stenciled on your back. You sneezed, lurching forward with the force, and they were wings.  
Wings. Wings wings wings you can fly you can fly wings wi n g s wings wing wingn wi ng s--  
You were suddenly knelt down in front of me, your eyes alight with something undetectable, shaking my shoulders. You can fly, you can fly, I know, I know, your breath reeked of spices and herbs and hope, so much of it. It overwhelmed me, and I flopped to the side to erratically cough until saliva dribbled from the corners of my chapped lips.  
You're crazy, you've cracked.  
No, no, I can fly.  
You turned around to show-and-tell the multicoloured tattoo I had sneakily glimpsed not two minutes ago.  
Oh my God, why would you...??  
Because I can fly!  
Your hands clenched themselves into fists, and your feet fidgeted, one Size 16 loafer over the other like you had to go the bathroom. You opened your mouth again, and the torrents of undiluted urine poured from your upper cavity. Contraptions, gizmos, whozits and whatzits and gadgets galore, of airplanes and pixies with honeydew flesh that could walk on water and be mist in the sky, who could fly, fly, you could fly you can prove it. You placed the back of your hand against my forehead and remarked that it was odd I fainted, seeing as I had no cold, fever, or temporary illness you could detect. I slapped you away, cringing at the volcanic heat radiating from you. The scarf tied on your belt loop shone in the light of the setting sun, and twinkled like it was its only job.  
I hate this, I hate this, no.  
Your hand caressed my face, thumb traveling across my cheek as you leaned in and mouthed against the groove of my upper lip that you. Were going. To fly!  
Your exhalations, strong as before, ghosted across my philtrum and I squeezed my lips together to hold back the choking sensation I felt. You sounded so...  
hopeful.  
I could not help but feel hopeful too. The little child inside me, the eight-year-old who slathered themself in Easter-Egg-green body paint and crinkled leaves to become a garden spirit, pushed its way past all of my objections, my refusals, my adamant screaming. I was screaming, hollering, and I could not stop, but the certainty in your voice!!! The utmost faith in this, how your eyes captured every ray of light, every bit of life and depicted tales that would captivate tens upon thousands and me, me, me, it was always me.  
You had taken me, my life, my light, my everything to fuel your own wishes but I was not sorry because this was what I had been waiting for! I believed! I believe!  
A long-forgotten smile crept onto my face, and tears began to bud as all the emotions hit me at once.  
You stood on the balcony, arms stretched like you were an airplane, sitting on the teetering edge. Holding on with one hand, you turned back to me. Expression shining with naught but glee and manic, beautiful, perfect hope, imagination incarnate, your grin shook as you joyfully sobbed  
I can fly  
and tipped forward, letting go.  
I waited a minute, two minutes, three. I was the house and the waterfalls were pouring over my cheekbones, sliding into my mouth and tasting of snowcone syrup and cloud fluff swelled and dripping with slowcoming realisation.  
The smile left my face, and never returned.  
With that, I left you behind, your corpse on the sidewalk mangled from an eleven-story drop, fingers stained with dirt and blood.


End file.
